"My dear," said the Marquise d'Espard to the Comtesse Feraud, Louis XVIII.'s last mistress, "Paris is certainly unique. It produces--whence and how, who knows?--women like this person, who seems ready to will and to do anything.""She really does will, and does do everything," put in des Lupeaulx, puffed up with satisfaction.
At this moment the wily Madame Rabourdin was courting the minister's wife. Carefully coached the evening before by des Lupeaulx, who knew all the countess's weak spots, she was flattering her without seeming to do so. Every now and then she kept silence; for des Lupeaulx, in love as he was, knew her defects, and said to her the night before, "Be careful not to talk too much,"--words which were really an immense proof of attachment. Bertrand Barrere left behind him this sublime axiom: "Never interrupt a woman when dancing to give her advice," to which we may add (to make this chapter of the female code complete), "Never blame a woman for scattering her pearls."The conversation became general. From time to time Madame Rabourdin joined in, just as a well-trained cat puts a velvet paw on her mistress's laces with the claws carefully drawn in. The minister, in matters of the heart, had few emotions. There was not another statesman under the Restoration who had so completely done with gallantry as he; even the opposition papers, the "Miroir," "Pandora,"and "Figaro," could not find a single throbbing artery with which to reproach him. Madame Rabourdin knew this, but she knew also that ghosts return to old castles, and she had taken it into her head to make the minister jealous of the happiness which des Lupeaulx was appearing to enjoy. The latter's throat literally gurgled with the name of his divinity. To launch his supposed mistress successfully, he was endeavoring to persuade the Marquise d'Espard, Madame de Nucingen, and the countess, in an eight-ear conversation, that they had better admit Madame Rabourdin to their coalition; and Madame de Camps was supporting him. At the end of the hour the minister's vanity was greatly tickled; Madame Rabourdin's cleverness pleased him, and she had won his wife, who, delighted with the siren, invited her to come to all her receptions whenever she pleased.
"For your husband, my dear," she said, "will soon be director; the minister intends to unite the two divisions and place them under one director; you will then be one of us, you know."His Excellency carried off Madame Rabourdin on his arm to show her a certain room, which was then quite celebrated because the opposition journals blamed him for decorating it extravagantly; and together they laughed over the absurdities of journalism.
"Madame, you really must give the countess and myself the pleasure of seeing you here often."And he went on with a round of ministerial compliments.
"But, Monseigneur," she replied, with one of those glances which women hold in reserve, "it seems to me that that depends on you.""How so?"
"You alone can give me the right to come here.""Pray explain."
"No; I said to myself before I came that I would certainly not have the bad taste to seem a petitioner.""No, no, speak freely. Places asked in this way are never out of place," said the minister, laughing; for there is no jest too silly to amuse a solemn man.
"Well, then, I must tell you plainly that the wife of the head of a bureau is out of place here; a director's wife is not.""That point need not be considered," said the minister. "your husband is indispensable to the administration; he is already appointed.""Is that a veritable fact?"
"Would you like to see the papers in my study? They are already drawn up.""Then," she said, pausing in a corner where she was alone with the minister, whose eager attentions were now very marked, "let me tell you that I can make you a return."She was on the point of revealing her husband's plan, when des Lupeaulx, who had glided noiselessly up to them, uttered an angry sound, which meant that he did not wish to appear to have overheard what, in fact, he had been listening to. The minister gave an ill-tempered look at the old beau, who, impatient to win his reward, had hurried, beyond all precedent, the preliminary work of the appointment. He had carried the papers to his Excellency that evening, and desired to take himself, on the morrow, the news of the appointment to her whom he was now endeavoring to exhibit as his mistress. Just then the minister's valet approached des Lupeaulx in a mysterious manner, and told him that his own servant wished him to deliver to him at once a letter of the utmost importance.
The general-secretary went up to a lamp and read a note thus worded:--Contrary to my custom, I am waiting in your ante-chamber to see you; you have not a moment to lose if you wish to come to terms with Your obedient servant, Gobseck.
